1. Field
The present disclosure relates to computer networks. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to a method and system for efficient routing in an information centric network (ICN).
2. Related Art
The exponential growth of user-generated content in the Internet has shifted the Internet usage pattern from host-oriented communication to peer-to-peer and content-based communication. Such a shift has brought with it an increasing demand for efficient addressing and routing for contents. As a result, information centric networking (ICN) architectures have been proposed. The goal of ICN architectures is to enable access to content and services by name, independently of their location, in order to improve network performance and end-user experience.
Typically, network traffic can be viewed at the application level as end-to-end communication for content transfer. In contrast, in an ICN, content is requested or returned based in part on the name given to it, and the ICN is responsible for routing content from the provider to the consumer. Content includes data that can be transported in the communication system, and can be any form of data such as text, images, video, and/or audio. In ICN, a name can refer to the entire content or a portion of the content. For example, a newspaper article can include multiple pieces of content (can be referred to as content objects) represented by one or more names. A piece of content can also be associated with metadata describing or augmenting the piece of content with information such as authentication data, creation date, content owner, etc.
ICN architectures operate based on name resolution and routing of contents (i.e., name-based content routing). In some ICN architectures, the names of data objects are mapped to addresses (e.g., using directory servers). These mapped addresses are then used for content routing. Some other ICN architectures directly use name-based routing of content. In name-based routing, the routers which produce or cache contents (can be referred to as anchors) advertise the existence of local copies of named data objects (NDO) or name prefixes denoting a set of objects with names sharing a common prefix. Based on the advertisements, routes to the produced and/or cached contents are established. Consumers of content issue content requests, which are forwarded along the established routes to the corresponding anchors.
With existing technologies, name-based routing in an ICN typically requires exchange of information regarding the physical network. Usually, these routing techniques use one or more of the following types of mechanisms: (i) maintaining paths to named content or using source routes to content; (ii) flooding of information about the network topology and the location of replicas of content; (iii) flooding of content requests; (iv) establishing spanning trees in an ICN for name-signaling; and (v) maintaining overlays using distributed hash tables (DHT). These mechanism burden the network with extensive calculation, bandwidth overhead, and/or inefficient routing.
While ICN brings many desirable features to content distribution, some issues remain unsolved in efficient name-based routing.